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Sticking to the Plot
I’ve been working on a seminar for teachers called “Snow White and the Seven Reading Strategies”, which is an exploration of the processes we automatically engage in as sophisticated readers, but which...
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I Want to Tell You a Digital Narrative
Writing in this week’s TESS, Peter Wright, president of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, offers a six-point plan to ‘rescue’ Scottish education from the doldrums in which he claims it to...
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Stitched in Time
There’s more than one way to tell a story effectively, and some of them are almost timeless. Just such a one is The Girl on the Wall: One Life’s Rich Tapestry by Jean Baggott, an intricate...
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There’s Been a Murder
I came upon this really interesting free movie-making software today, and I have been messing about with it to see what it can do. There seems to be an increasing number of these apparently frivolous...
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Alice’s School Report – Making Great Progress
Regular readers of the blog will know that I am a huge fan of Inanimate Alice, the online digital novel which looks to me, and an increasing number of teachers across the world, like it begins to...
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More Than One Way to Tell a Story
“All stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order” Jean-Luc Godard Queneau's iconic Exercises in Style Very few people would dispute that there are some literary...
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Message from Stornoway: I Can and I Will
Last weekend I had the pleasure of chairing the first ever TeachMeet Hebrides in Stornoway on the beautiful Isle of Lewis. The sun shone as we gathered in the bright new foyer of Lews Castle College...
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The Power of Fiction and The Storytelling Animal
As a former English teacher, I have often argued on the blog and elsewhere that the English curriculum in schools offers a distorted syllabus, in which non-fiction is heavily outweighed by fiction...
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New on Storify: Teaching – An Academic Career?
Given my conviction that storytelling is at the heart of learning, I was always going to be intrigued by a new curation tool and website which makes the creation of stories simple and intuitive....
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What Do You Mean By Literacy?
Readers of the blog will know that one of my regular mantras is, ‘Learning IS Narrative’. ie not only is narrative - or storytelling – an important element of learning, but that all learning consists...
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Alice Through the Looking Glass
Regular readers of the blog will know of my admiration for Inanimate Alice, the digital novel which has captured the imagination of teachers and young readers around the world, and many of you have...
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Alice Is Coming Home
Good news for fans of the wonderful Inanimate Alice series. The long-awaited Episode 5 will be released on 1st December along with a newly re-vamped website, access to designer’s journals and a gallery...
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Ten Books For English Teachers
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.” Charlie Munger Ten Books To Give An English Teacher For Christmas. This was first written as a guest...
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You may have noticed – or perhaps not – that it’s a very long time since my last blogpost, but I came across this previously unpublished essay which I wrote several years ago then promptly forgot, so I...
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The Only Truth is Narrative Truth
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) In his essay on ‘The Fallibility of Memory‘ Oliver Sacks offers us an insight into why discussions about the importance of ‘knowledge’ in education are often superficial, and...
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